Frugal Babe

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Recycling A Thrift Store Painting

July 11, 2012 By Frugal Babe

Last week at Goodwill, along with the nifty medicine cabinet, I also found a painting that was rather ugly but mounted on a nice, heavy-duty board.  I guess it was a day for finding things with potential. 

The painting was big (probably almost three feet square) and heavy with great hangers on the back.  It had some damage to one of the corners, where it had maybe been dropped or bashed into something and the corner was a bit splayed out.  I pondered that for a few minutes in the store and decided that we could fix it with some wood glue and a C-clamp.

The picture was eight dollars, and we brought it home.

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The first thing I did was fix the corner.  I smushed plenty of wood glue into the area that had been damaged, and then clamped that corner between two pieces of wood and left it to dry overnight.  By the next morning it was solid and ready for paint.

We started with primer, which we already had in the garage.

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I had used a gift card from my MIL to buy some acrylic paints (along with the hooks for my jewelry box), so after the primer dried I covered the whole thing with two layers of blue acrylic paint.  Then I put some brown, yellow, white and green paint on a plate for our son, and he got to do his very first painting.  He loves to draw, and was thrilled at the prospect of painting a picture.  I gave him some tips on how to use a brush (like petting a cat – you never push the brush backwards against the bristles) and I washed out the brush for him in between colors, but that was the only help he needed.  Here’s what we ended up with:

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Mountains with trees on top, and a house, tree and person down in the foothills.  Plus a sun and some clouds in that beautiful blue sky.  Then he added his name in the corner and we hung his masterpiece in his room.  He loves it.

We have plenty of paint left over from this project, so I’m going to keep an eye out for other paintings at Goodwill that I could paint over.  It looked like a lot of fun when I was watching our son, and I’d like to give it a try too. 

If you have artwork that you no longer love, or if you come across a piece in a thrift store that has solid bones but a not-so-great picture, you can always recycle it into something new.  If you let your kids paint their own pictures, they will be ever so proud of their creations.  And instead of paper stuck to the fridge with magnets, you’ll have a piece of original art to hang on the wall.

Filed Under: DIY, hobbies, kids 4 Comments

Comments

  1. Kay says

    July 12, 2012 at 9:25 am

    Fantastic idea!! I showed it to my 5 yr old and she said she’s like to do it too.. Thanks for sharing FB!

    Reply
  2. Penniless Parenting says

    July 15, 2012 at 3:55 am

    I love that you did something green, but it would probably be cheaper to buy a canvas new than to buy that painting at goodwill…

    Reply
    • Frugal Babe says

      July 15, 2012 at 7:23 am

      We’ve done both recently, because we had so much fun with the painting from Goodwill :)  We got a few canvases at Michaels when they were having a 40% off sale, although they were quite a bit smaller than this one.  We paid roughly $3 each for 16×20 canvases, and $1.50 each for 8x10s (in two packs).  But the painting from Goodwill is much better quality, and much larger.  It’s about 3 feet square and weighs about 20 pounds.  It has two recessed hangers in the back, and a totally different feel to it than painting on canvas.  It was perfect for our son, as he leaned on the board while he was painting, and that wouldn’t have worked with a canvas. 
       I’ve seen other paintings at Goodwill that weren’t as high quality and were more expensive.  I think this one was lower priced because of the damaged corner, which was pretty easy to fix, especially since we were going to paint over it.But we’re also having fun with the canvases.  Our son is working on one right now, and I even had a go with one last night.  I felt like I was back in 8th grade art class, only this time I could do whatever I wanted!

      Reply
  3. Michael says

    July 15, 2012 at 11:27 am

    Clever idea!

    Reply

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